Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/230

216 fort — a rude square building, which can be considered a fortification only by courtesy. It had in the court a single cannon, which is reserved, I suppose, for saluting on great occasions, as when a prince or other grand personage makes the pilgrimage to Mecca. The fort has one provision against a siege in a capacious well, from which the water is drawn up by a wheel and buckets. As this water is not needed for a besieged garrison, it is conveyed by a small aqueduct to large tanks outside the fort, near the northern wall. These tanks seem indeed as if they might furnish water for an army. There is also a well outside, fifty feet deep and about fifty feet in circumference, encircled by a huge trough of stone, from which twenty or thirty camels could drink at once. The next morning the herds were driven in from the desert to fill up the cisterns within them with a supply for days. Here camels bound on the pilgrimage drink to the full before setting out; while their masters, drawing up the water in leathern buckets, which are let down by goat's-hair cords, fill their water-skins for their long march across the desert.

When we had thus inspected the "Fort of Nukhl," and made all sorts of flattering speeches to its gallant commander, we thought we had performed the courtesies of the occasion. But not so the old Colonel. He accompanied us back to our tent. We offered him a chair, but he preferred to squat, like a Turk, on our rugs. We then tried to engage him in conversation, but his resources were not great. Evidently his ideas of the world did not extend beyond Cairo and Constantinople. At length we were at a loss how to entertain a visitor who sat like an Indian sachem in his wigwam, answering only with grunts. We found we had an elephant on our hands. He seemed in no haste to terminate his visit. On the slightest suggestion, he was ready to stay to dinner, or indeed to spend